Scimone Sframeli Company returns to the deepest roots of the theatre: with its unmistakable style Scimone and Sframeli meet the painful drama of Pirandello, and the result is surprising. Breaking the traditions and liturgies of one of the most represented classics and still quite faithfully following the original storyline, they merge Pirandello’s poetics with the Sicilian nature lived on the margins, typical of their acting experience and dramaturgy.

Theatre adaptation of Pirandello’s Six characters in search of an author, Sei is an attempt to relate the language of the great master and the language of our contemporary theatre. During rehearsals, we decided to cut the number of characters, to erase or add some dialogues and scenes, to replace some terms avoiding any dramatic change to the work’s original structure.
Inside a theatre, two actors and a director are about to start rehearsing a play that will probably never see the stage lights.
Suddenly, a blackout occurs and the theatre turns into a dark room.
One of the actors goes looking for help but the only other person there, a technician, has just left a few minutes before.
Nobody can help and light will only come back on when the Six Characters – flesh and bones – will appear on stage, rejected and abandoned by their own creator.
The Father, The Mother, The Stepdaughter, The Son, The Boy and The Child (a girl) will light up the theatre when trying to stage their own “painful tragedy”.
Shocked by this sudden appearance, the Company think that the “Six” are just outsiders or crazy people and try to do anything to chase them out.
However, when The Father starts describing his “painful tragedy” and the related sufferings and family conflicts, he draws the growing attention of the actors who gradually realize that taking the Six on stage is becoming more and more necessary. Coming to life again on stage is both the characters’ and the actors’ wish. All of them know that their stage life can only exist if a perfect symbiotic relation between them is established. And this relation is produced from time to time, from second to second, while performing. Moreover, the play should necessarily include the audience. The true magic of theatre relies exactly in this very a relation between actors, characters and audience; this is what makes it possible to go beyond fiction and reality.

Spiro Scimone and Francesco Sframeli